Settlement is the latest of a string of police misconduct
cases costing taxpayers millions of dollars.
An innocent man imprisoned for seven months by Baltimore
police on the basis of his reputed nickname will be awarded $150,000 to settle
his lawsuit.
The Board of Estimates is set to pay the sum tomorrow to
Darren Brown, who charged four police officers with acting “with deliberate
and/or reckless disregard for the truth” while conducting an investigation of
an August 2008 shooting at a Chinese carry-out on Harford Rd.
The case was settled after U.S. District Court Judge Richard
D. Bennett denied a motion by the four defendants to dismiss the suit. The cash
settlement will terminate the case, with the proviso that the plaintiff and his
lawyers not publicly discuss the lawsuit.
Millions a Year
The Brown case is the latest of scores of settlements since
2008 – costing taxpayers an average of $3.5 million a year – paid to citizens
who have accused police of misconduct (here and here). Included in these fees
are as much as $700,000 a year that the city spends for outside counsel
defending officers from lawsuits.
“Not only do [the settlements] siphon off scarce funds that
could have been used to address other pressing problems in Baltimore, but each
judgment also can represent an instance where citizens were avoidably harmed by
the actions of officers whose job it is to protect them,” Councilwoman Mary Pat
Clarke stated when the City Council investigated the matter in 2011.
Funds for police settlements are approved by the Board of
Estimates headed by City Council President Bernard C. “Jack” Young and Mayor
Stephanie Rawlings-Blake.
City Solicitor George Nilson, who also sits on the Board of
Estimates and whose office negotiated the Brown settlement, has said that the
city will opt for out-of-court agreements to avoid the expense of a trial and
the uncertainty of a jury verdict.
Police officials told the City Council in 2011 that they
have instituted better training for officers, which has reduced the number of
brutality complaints. About 65% of the cases against police allege excessive
force, they said.
Who’s “Mookie?”
In his ruling, Judge Bennett said he accepted the following
description by Brown as factual:
A surveillance tape of the shooting on the night of August
5, 2008 led to the arrest of David Jefferson as one shooter, while a witness
identified the second shooter as “Mookie . . . [who] hangs in the 2700 block of
the Alameda.”
Based on his previous encounters with Jefferson and Darren
Brown, Officer Paul Southard believed that “Mookie” was Brown. Detective Edward
Bailey III, who was handling the investigation, prepared a probable-cause
statement identifying Brown as the second suspect.
Officers Southard and Julian Min arrested Brown on August 7
and charged him with attempted murder, assault and armed robbery. The lawsuit
alleges that these charges were “brought without review by or approval of a
prosecutor . . . [and that] Defendants Bailey, Southard, Min and [Officer
Felipe] Carrasquillo made no further attempts” to confirm whether Brown was, in
fact, “Mookie.”
Four months after Brown was incarcerated, David Jefferson’s
mother saw the surveillance tape and identified the second suspect as being her
son’s cousin, Kevin Johnson Jr.
“City’s Indifference” to False Arrests
According to the lawsuit, the State’s Attorney’s Office was
notified by Brown’s lawyer on December 4, 2008, and again on December 19, of
the mother’s statement, but no action was taken until the spring of 2009, when
a new assistant state’s attorney was assigned to the case and asked the Police
Department to reopen the investigation and interview David Jefferson’s mother.
“This new investigation led to the dismissal of the charges
against plaintiff and his release on March 13, 2009,” according to the suit. A
month later, Kevin Johnson Jr., who was nicknamed “Mookie,” was arrested by
police and was subsequently convicted of the shooting.
In 2011, Brown filed a federal lawsuit against the city that
not only accused the officers of “reckless disregard,” but claimed that “the
Baltimore City Police Department’s customs, policies and practices in terms of
officer training, officer evaluations and arrests without probable cause
resulted in his unlawful arrest.”
The suit further alleged that the failure of the Mayor and
City Council “to seek prosecutorial review and the city’s indifference and lack
of efforts at halting the widespread and on-going practice of arresting
individuals without probable cause” violated the plaintiff’s constitutional
rights.
Judge Bennett ruled that the allegations against the police
department and Mayor and City Council would be stayed pending the resolution of
the case against the officers.
Three of the four officers are still on the police force.
Police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said Southard has left the department.
